An attempt at vaguely humourous Apocafic. Jack O'Neill and Ryan Atwood in a Zombie Apocalypse. Most of the humor stems from the title (which is a theme in this thing... lol) and from O'Neill's interpretations of the looks Ryan is giving him.

He Refused To Call Them Zombies

The boy didn't talk, and O'Neill was fine with that. The end of the world wasn't time for lots of big talk, it was time for quiet reflection. At least, that's what he tried to tell him self as he watched the kid, probably no older than 15 or 16, hurriedly but carefully selecting and packing food from the tiny grocery store shelves. The kid was methodical about it, bypassing all the snacks most teenager would gravitate towards, and going for granola bars, power bars, dried fruit that didn't have added sugars, the things they needed to stay healthy.

"A little sugar won't kill us," O'Neill commented as the kid walked right past a display of chocolate. He smiled when the boy back tracked and grabbed a couple handfuls of chocolate bars and put them in one of the carefully packed crates before turning to look at O'Neill, an eyebrow raised as if to say 'is that better?' in a sarcastic tone. O'Neill nodded sharply, saving his amused grin for when the boy had turned away again to look over the cans of soup.

As O'Neill glanced over the limited offerings of magazines and books, his mind briefly flashing to how much fun it would be to put a pile of romance novels on Daniel's nightstand and wait for Sam to find them, he head the crunch of feet on glass and whipped around, P-90 coming up in preperation. Behind him, he heard the kid go silent, not moving and maybe not even breathing, as they waited a long moment to see whether a person appeared or one of those... things. He refused to call them Zombies.

The moan was enough to tell them, and when O'Neill started walking backwards, towards the kid, he heard the movement pick up again, including the tiniest of clicks as the snap on the thigh holster he'd given the kid was undone. He hazarded a brief glance over, and saw the kid had crouched down, gun in hand and aimed at knee height. It had worried O'Neill the first time he saw the kid using this tactic, but when he realized the logic, that if they slowed them down with bullets to knees they could have more time to either escape or get the kill shot off.

It's a straggler, a single one of the things that had wandered into the middle of their shopping spree, and O'Neill waits, listening as the kid stands and takes a step forward before placing a single bullet between the creatures eyes. They wait a moment for the sounds of others coming, then go back to what they were doing, the kid getting food, O'Neill looking for reading material, both moving a bit quicker by silent agreement.

Yeah, the kid didn't talk, but he and O'Neill understood eachother just fine.

~~~

It had started innocuously enough. The massive Solar Flares had messed anything and everything electronic, putting it all on the fritz. But that hadn't been the cause of the end of the world. No, that was the responsibility of a group that thought the flares were a sign of end times and decided to help things along by releasing a biotoxin. 5 in 10 died within days. 1 in 10 never got sick at all. And the other 4 in 10? They turned into... well... O'Neill refused to call them Zombies, but basically, that's exactly what they were, and not the fun voodoo kind.

He found the kid by complete chance in Reno. He hadn't even meant to be in Reno, but he'd found himself stuck in an airport when everything went crazy and the plane made an emergency landing. And about two weeks later, when it was all over but the things-he-refused-to-call-zombies, O'Neill ventured out to see if he could find anyone else alive. He'd searched the typical places, then finally found the kid when he spotted a column of smoke and the smell of burning flesh. He followed it, and found the kid, dirty and bleeding, trying to burn the body of a woman who had clearly been infected. His mother, O'Neill guess as the boy looked up and they locked gazes, grief burning in eyes that were sunk into an otherwise stoney face.

He'd felt like an idiot when he spent 15 minutes trying to get the kid to talk before he'd realized the kid couldn't, and then he was disgusted with himself for not having a pad of paper and a pencil so he could find out the kid's name. It just hadn't seemed like a priority when he'd been grabbing stuff.

~~~

He could have gotten paper sometime in the next few weeks, but with it just being the two of them, names weren't really needed. And food, medicine, and bandages were higher priorities than paper and pencils. As they were packing up the military truck O'Neill had commandeered from the base formerly known as Area 51, now an empty shell that occasionally echoed with the sounds of moans, O'Neill heard a rattle and turned to see the kid with a can of bright red spraypaint. He watched as the kid slowly, carefully, wrote 'No More Food Here, 1 Infected Corpse'. The chances of anyone coming here was slim, not with how few survivors they'd seen even from a distance, but the kid did it at every stop they made.

"Maybe you should sign it," O'Neill said.

The kid looked over, seemingly startled by the suggestion, then crouched down to add, in smaller but still large letters, 'RYAN'.

"Huh. Didn't see you for a Ryan," O'Neill said. He smirked at the questioning eyebrow. "Don't ask me, I don't know what I thought your name was, just didn't imagine it was Ryan."

The kid, Ryan, rolled his eyes and put the cap back on the spraypaint before pushing himself to his feet and tilting his head towards the highway, questioning.

"Yeah, let's get going," O'Neill agreed. "We should be in Colorado Springs my nightfall." He paused, considering. "I'll bet you and Teal'c get along famously, the eyebrow thing." He hid his grin as Ryan gave him the now very familiar 'What the fuck are you smoking?' look, and gestured towards the truck. "Let's get going," he repeated.

The End

Don't ask me, really, I don't know. I have this idea for a sequel/companion from Ryan's POV that reveals that the last look actually means "What the fuck are you smoking and why are you holding out on me?" lol

He might not need words, but it WOULD be kind of fun, if months later he suddenly would say something and O'Neill realized that it was not so much that he couldn't talk, as that he refused to talk (kind of like refuses to call them Zombies;))

I actually had that thought in my head! lol... He's silent for a long while, and then one day he suddenly says something, just some little comment that shouldn't cause people to stay in shock and surprise, but it does because Silent Boy Speaks! lol